June, 2010 - NIA Creative Hosts eHealth at Inaugeral Shoot in New Sound Stage

After many late nights and long weekends, at last the NIA Creative sound stage has become a reality. Our first guests were Nate Purpura and Suzanne Thomas of eHealth, who arranged for several of their customers to come in and shoot testimonial commentary about purchasing insurance from eHealthInsurance.com. While we often can and do shoot testimonials on-site at customer locations, it can sometimes be difficult to secure space in suitable rooms where sound and light can be controlled. While renting a local sound stage is an option, the rental cost can sometimes strain the available budget. By building our own stage, NIA is now able to offer this option to customers at minimal additional cost.

Construction was planned and built by Creative Director Chris Finetti, Motion Graphics Art Director Christian Overacker and Production Director Craig Finetti. The "base stage" features a custom-built seamless coved stage painted white. The crew can paint the stage a different color upon request, as well as paint it green for greenscreen shoots if needed. However, because we recently added ReflecMedia's Light Ring Green Screen Technology to our arsenal, we are actually able to shoot greenscreen without a green background. The 17' wide stage can accommodate full-body shots and is large enough to shoot small groups of people. Additionally, we can custom-build and store small sets such as a medical office, business office etc.

The most critical aspect of building the stage was sound-proofing. After considering several options, the team opted to surround the stage with heavy-duty hanging furniture pads. The roll-up garage door provided the greatest challenge; however, that was resolved by building a custom sound wall that is inserted outside the closed garage door and then removed when the stage is not in use.

Upon conclusion of the inaugural shoot, Creative Director Chris Finetti noted, "Before today, I had an idea in my head of how this might go, but of course you always wonder if it will work as well as you imagine. As it turned out, everything went without a hitch. The stage was really quiet and looked great, and our customer was impressed with how well everything came together."

About NIA Creative:

NIA Creative was founded in 1996 and has grown to become a trusted go-to marketing partner for healthcare and technology companies and public sector/non-profit organizations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and U.S. In 2005, NIA launched its healthcare division, NIA Creative Health, to better meet the needs of device, pharma, diagnostics and consumer health firms. NIA is unique in that both traditional agency and full-scale production services are available in-house. Services include advertising and branding, web development, video production, animation, interactive media development and tradeshow/event marketing. Clients include Baxter BioScience, Biogen Idec, Cadence Design, Carl Zeiss Meditec, City of San Jose, Clarity Medical Systems, eHealthInsurance.com, Genentech, HA Logistics, Kaiser Permanente, Marin County Department of Health & Human Services, NuGEN Technologies, SellPoint, Tensilica, Themis, Workday and Zhone Technologies. For more information, visit www.niacreative.com and www.niacreativehealth.com.